PROFILé5 x x x W HEN Earl Sande won the Kentucky Derby on Zev in 1 923 a photograph was taken of him and the horse, which appeared in many newspapers. It was the sort of photograph that is always taken of a Derby winner. The horse, looking slim and easy, stood in the winner's circle at Churchill Downs; a man was holding the bridle and Sande, on Zev's back, sat smiling, with a big bundle of roses in his arms. His rather wide, small, reddened face, peaked cap and large ears poked out stiffly from above the flowers. This week Sande is rid- ing at Saratoga. What horses he will ride, what races he will win, will be duly noted in the week's press. But even if he has many big days this year, it will be hard to find a day more important in his life than the day he won on Zev. Seeing that photograph, you could imagine the rest of the scene. The crowd in the stands would still be clapping and shouting; along the rail, on stamped earth littered ' : f: with torn betting tickets, men with field glasses slung round them would be trying to see over each other's heads; the band would be playing and the numbers would stIll show on the board. A t such a moment a jockey seen1S an impor- tant and memorable figure, but I don't think many people are misled by photographs of Derby winners into supposing that a jockey's life is mainly a matter of receiving bouquets. It is hard, dangerous, and not very weB paid. The prescribed fee for a ride is ten dollars a losing mount and twenty-five dollars a winner. Of course, the owners don't stick to that -they give presents. Many of the best jockeys make from $15,000 to $20,000 a year. Sande makes close to $50,000. Being the highest paid jockey, he has a good chance to show off like the riders of the eighties and nineties, jockeys who lived in a flashy way, bet big money on themselves, and bought champagne when they won. But Sande is quiet. He never finds much to say to strangers. One betting man who tried for half an hour to make him talk about coming winners was thoughtful as he left Sande's house. "Say," he said to the man who had introduced him, "your boy-friend, Sande, is -dumb, isn't he?" SILK AND LéA THé"- "Oh, I don't know." "He's dumb, all right. Every time I mentioned a horse he d say, 'Yes, that's a good horse.' Finally I said, 'I guess they're all good horses, Mr. Sande,' and he said, 'Yes, they have to be good.' He's dumb, all right. He's dumb like a fox." Sande is quiet when he is riding. He is what is known as a hand-rider. Even when he steps away from the bunch to win a spectacular race in the . / '1 /'., " :. .... . ," :.;. .... ..". . , " .' " . . ",' ", .,\'.. .r :. ... :"", I . ... .rè;' ..;....t twu. Earl Sande last part of the stretch you won't see him lean out to whale a horse with the whip; his hands are what make it move. And in his personal life he has so little to say that you think him stupid until you realize that his intel- ligence is a specialized kind of muscu- lar strategy, useful for the single pur- pose of getting a horse through a race. He can't analyze this quality and wouldn't know he had it if he didn't see its results. He has no talent for ex- ploiting himself. He would have been happy and fficient as a bank clerk, but he would never have got a raise unless the hank caught fire or some \:"':'i! )"": x X x situation came about in which he could show his ability to act quickly and re- sist excitement. There are lots of men like Earl Sande in the world His brother, for instance, had the same sort of coördination that he has, but his brother could never ride race horses. He was too big. Now he runs a clothing store in Salem, Ore- gon. Earl Sande now is not much big- ger than his big brother was when the Sande family, early in the cen- tury, moved from Groton, South Da- kota, to American Falls, Idaho. Mr. Sande, senior, was a fair-sized Norwe- gian who bossed a section-gang for the Milwaukee Railroad. The men who , worked for him thought he was Scotch because, as does his son now, he pronounced his name "Sandy." The boys went to school in American Falls. Earl wanted a pony. When he was fourteen he traded some live ducks and a shotgun for a little roan named Babe. T HERE weren't many good horses in American Falls. A man named Burr Scott had the best, a couple of racing cold bloods (horses that are half thoroughbred). He had seen Sande ride Babe in some pick-up races. On the Fourth of J ul y, which was cele brate in American Falls with some sprints and a rodeo, he paid him two dollars to ride Guise, one of the cold bloods. Sande won that race and later-rode other races for Burr Scott, a shiftless, adventuring man, but one who knew horses. That winter Earl went back to c;;.chool. One day in spring a boy passed him, a note which said that ,omeone outside was asking for him. He got excused and went out. Burr Scott was sitting in a buckboard be- hind which his two race horses were tied on a lead-rope. "I thought I'd take a trip through .L rizona," the man said; "there's plenty of racing there. If you came with me we might make some money." A few weeks later Sande wrote to his family from Phoenix, Arizona. He explained how he had come to run away; Burr Scott's offer, he said, had seemed like a chance it would be bad to miss. The trip had not turned out as well as they expected. The cold bloods lost races, and Scott had been farced to sell them in Phoenix